A BIRDWATCHER'S GUIDE TO GLITTER GULCH
Kurt Rasmussen
The Fremont pigeon never sings
and seldom does he fly.
He’s wiser than to flail his wings
in vain attempts to rise.
He knows: to scuffle is to eat
dead things off the blazing street
in a skyless world of shuffled feet
with tiny, famished eyes.
It wasn’t long ago that they
would scatter at my walk.
I had jackpot things to say
and neon in my talk.
I was two casinos tall
in the days before my fall
and if I noticed them at all
it was to fling a rock.
I found an ink-winged angel hiding
in my blood and followed
her to where she kept the night.
She offered it. I swallowed.
For twenty years the sun was gone.
For twenty years I wasn’t done.
My heart became a thing of bone:
dry and rank and hollow.
These days I am a stretch of road,
a piece of street with eyes.
Words are scarce as Marlboros.
The ones I keep are lies.
A flightless bird, I hug the ground,
for there my brothers can be found.
But now I hear their gentle sound.
I see them mourn the sky.
###
Kurt Rasmussen lives and writes in Las Vegas where he is an active member of both the recovery and poetry communities. He has published poems in Chariton Review, Tishman Review and other respected journals, as well as in the recent anthology, Sandstone & Silver edited by Clark County poet-laureate, Heather Lang-Cassera. But wait! There’s more! He has a book out! YES: Poems.
The Fremont pigeon never sings
and seldom does he fly.
He’s wiser than to flail his wings
in vain attempts to rise.
He knows: to scuffle is to eat
dead things off the blazing street
in a skyless world of shuffled feet
with tiny, famished eyes.
It wasn’t long ago that they
would scatter at my walk.
I had jackpot things to say
and neon in my talk.
I was two casinos tall
in the days before my fall
and if I noticed them at all
it was to fling a rock.
I found an ink-winged angel hiding
in my blood and followed
her to where she kept the night.
She offered it. I swallowed.
For twenty years the sun was gone.
For twenty years I wasn’t done.
My heart became a thing of bone:
dry and rank and hollow.
These days I am a stretch of road,
a piece of street with eyes.
Words are scarce as Marlboros.
The ones I keep are lies.
A flightless bird, I hug the ground,
for there my brothers can be found.
But now I hear their gentle sound.
I see them mourn the sky.
###
Kurt Rasmussen lives and writes in Las Vegas where he is an active member of both the recovery and poetry communities. He has published poems in Chariton Review, Tishman Review and other respected journals, as well as in the recent anthology, Sandstone & Silver edited by Clark County poet-laureate, Heather Lang-Cassera. But wait! There’s more! He has a book out! YES: Poems.